The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department has announced a new local crime mapping system for the 42 cities and 130 unincorporated communities that it polices.
"People want to know what is going on in their communities," said Sheriff Lee Baca. “By making crime information easier for the public to access, the public is better able to partner with us to prevent crime."
Once on the www.Crimemapping.com site, users can “filter” crimes from a list of law enforcement agencies that provide data to the site, and click on Part One crimes for specific information such as the date and time each crime occurred. Important links are also provided, as well a feature that allows users to view crime trends and subscribe to receive free Crime Alerts via e-mail when new activity occurs in their area.
The Sheriff’s Department directly feeds its crime data daily to the Omega Group to ensure that each “Part One” (mostly these are violent crime and thefts) crime is reported accurately on the site. The records themselves are also put through an exclusive data scrubbing process that works to locate each crime incident geographically, to a hundred block.
The Omega Group has been building advanced internal facing mapping applications for law enforcement since 1992. www.CrimeMapping.com was created in 2008 in an effort to help extend the reach of law enforcement by keeping the public well informed about recent crime activity.
“There are presently over 200 agencies live at the site with another 100 in our staging environment being tested to go live soon,” said Milan Mueller, President of The Omega Group. These include many other policing jurisdictions in Los Angeles County.
A link to the crime maps can be found on the Crime Information and Prevention page of the LASD at www.lasd.org at:
http://sheriff.lacounty.gov/wps/portal/lasd/crimeprevention/
In the future, the LASD will be announcing CRIMEVIEW®Community, a browser-based community policing application that gives the public access to crime data in their neighborhoods quickly and easily. Features of CRIMEVIEW®Community include:
•Investigate Incidents –map out and query for specific crimes near an address park or landmark as well as within a specific boundary. Select from a query of Part One crimes.
•Create Reports –both summary and detailed reports can be accessed for export to Excel and PDF formats.
•Search Geographically –standard navigation tools such as pan, zoom, identify, report, print, legend as well as overview map.
•Query Chronologically –query incidents during a specific time period.
•Visualize Patterns –new intelligent charting features allow users to quickly visualize crime activity and drill down for more information.
Partner to prevent or report crime by contacting your local Sheriff’s station. Or if you wish to remain Anonymous, call “LA Crime Stoppers” by dialing 800-222-TIPS (8477), texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org
Editor's note: we like the icons -- the mask for "Burglary" is particularly a great idea -- but somebody should tell "The Omega Group" that they sound like a pack of supervillains.
